Re: [Content] Comcast Future

No comcast has it figured out pretty well. They have a economy tier internet that really doesnt save much money. They also have the tiers pretty well within what people would want. Im only ever willing to pay promo rates for what they offer. Im currently on comcast starter tier. When this tier expires i go up one and then i will get the history channel and military channel as next go around i will have to upgrade to the next highest tier. It will take me about five years to exhaust the promos at which point i will go to verizon and start the round robbin with them. But if history repeats itself comcast will start me over on the round robin. I think im going on around ten years or so with comcast making me happy. I really dont see why they would change anything. And if they do im fine with going to verizon and seeing how they do things. Since im going on around ten years and dont see why anyone else couldnt do the same thing i have to think if it isnt broken why change. Of course my brother never pays his bill in time. They take him to the cleaners and he gets nothing. Idoubt it would even be legal for comcast to come out with a tier only offering there networks with internet. Im always up for additional options tho.

Idoubt it would even be legal for comcast to come out with a tier only offering there networks with internet.

To the best of my knowledge the only legal requirement is that the "must carry" stations must be carried. But since 1993 all the networks ABC/CBS/FOX have not chosen "must carry" in favor of negotiating some kind of deal. "Must carry" stations are usually only local news or religious stations

You would have to be careful in how the channels are marketed. They would essentially have to be sold as "free" channels with internet. But of course the internet price would include a margin for the corporate channels. Even if only 1 million households chose this option, it would still give a significant boost for advertisers. NBC|SyFy|USA would be the principal choices during prime time.

I am still waiting for the day when your bill comes in the mail, and it is $25 for cable service and corporate owned channels, $12/set top box and programming costs $29.35 (and they itemize what the cost is of each channel to COMCAST). They still won't let you pick and choose channels, but they will be open about what they pay for them.

When you have that much money anything is possible, when you have that much greed, not much is plausible, however.

Comcast is a publicly owned company. Greed has little to do with it. Turning profits for investors that, you know, invested in it has a LOT to do with it.Welcome to Economics and how the world works.

The "greed" if you would want to call it that would more or less come in on the Content Providers part who constantly raise their contracts yearly. Which in turn causes Cable Prices to go up yearly.Comcast offering their own owned channels would be a dream. It would however cannibalize the rest of their offerings.

That trend, I would think, would only bolster the other MSOs to start snatching up content providers then re-selling them to other MSOs for jacked up prices.--CableTechs.org/"Horrible People with Integrity"

I would have to imagine that the structure is not such that Comcast can do what it wants with these channels, just because it "owns" them. There is still money changing hands, even if that money is just numbers on an internal balance sheet.

Greed has everything to do with publicly owned companies. This is how capitalism works in the US.

If consumers had more direct control over the programming content they could choose to pay for, it would bring competition into the mix, and the content providers would not be able to constantly raise their contracts.

Cable TV made their bed, but the future sees a lot of nails for the mattress.

Is it possible that someday Comcast will sell a low priced internet with only Comcast owned networks? NBC, USA, Bravo, SyFy, G4, Comcast sports, E!, etc. Everything else will be an upcharge.

I'm pretty sure Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, News Corp, Scripps, etc would throw a fit if Comcast starting offering a TV package that includes just "Comcast owned" TV stations. And there would be more questions and discussions when carriage rights get renegotiated

Ideally, I think that is how the bundles should be sold (if A La Carte per-channel isn't on the table). If you can't pick by individual network, buy channels in packages based on who owns the channels. Thats how the programmers sell the channels to the distributors -- let the consumers buy them that way.